As of: March 8, 2024, 10:56 a.m
By: Carmen Mörwald
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The Digital Markets Act will enable WhatsApp users to communicate across providers in the future.
However, the third-party providers stand in the way.
Munich – Until now, WhatsApp users could only send messages to others if they also used Messenger.
This is set to change when the Digital Markets Act (DMA) comes into force on March 7th.
The law passed by the EU Parliament heralds a turning point.
Fundamental change: WhatsApp enables interoperability
The DMA is primarily intended to ensure fairer competition in digital services and better opportunities for new competitors.
The basic assumption is that some large platform operators have become so powerful that they can cement their market position.
It is therefore not surprising that the US group Meta, which has owned the WhatsApp messenger since 2014, is being taken under the wing.
The law includes several rules for the so-called gatekeepers.
One of them obliges Meta to open its messenger platforms to third parties.
This means that services such as Signal, Telegram or iMessage can now register directly with WhatsApp and conclude a contract with the parent company in order to enable cross-provider communication, also known as interoperability.
Interoperability between messenger services
Creating interoperability enables users of messenger services to communicate across providers.
In this way, messages can be exchanged or calls made, even if the communication partners use messengers from different providers.
Source: Federal Network Agency
Third-party messages should end up in a separate area in WhatsApp.
This should make it clear that different security standards could apply to these, explained WhatsApp manager Dick Brouwer in an interview with
Wired
magazine .
Meta's messenger currently uses Signal's encryption technology.
This makes networking with other services that also use it easier.
Turning point in WhatsApp or not?
Services do not want to implement change
The third party signup process is easy.
However, it takes time until the function is available to all users.
Meta says it can take up to three months for interoperability to be fully implemented after a messenger service signs up.
However: While WhatsApp has to create access, competing services such as Signal and Threema do not want to network at all.
According to the
German Press Agency
, Signal points out that the service goes beyond protecting content: “We have developed novel techniques to also provide confidential metadata such as profile names and photos, contact lists, group memberships and information about who is sending messages to whom Encrypt.” Other major apps “don’t come close to Signal’s privacy standards.”
The entry into force of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) heralds a turning point for the messenger WhatsApp.
© Andre M. Chang / dpa
Possible turning point for Whatsapp, but other messenger services are seeing problems
At Threema it was said that Meta's messenger specified all the protocols.
“We would not know for sure what happens to user data when it is transferred to WhatsApp, especially since WhatsApp is not open source.”
There are also unresolved problems such as addressing, since WhatsApp uses phone numbers and Threema uses randomly generated IDs.
This could potentially deanonymize Threema users.
So whether there really is a turning point in WhatsApp remains to be seen.
What is certain, however, is that the DMA will change a lot in the future.
Large corporations such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are also on the list published by the EU Commission.
If they violate the law, they face high fines and, in exceptional cases, even the company being split up.
(cln/dpa)